


The World Shifted

by lostonaseaofdreams



Category: NCIS
Genre: Before Tali Shows up, Episode: s13e24 Family First, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Honestly just a sad little drabble, McGee finds out, Tony talks about his feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-17 17:08:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29969601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostonaseaofdreams/pseuds/lostonaseaofdreams
Summary: McGee realizes how much he had missed in the bullpen when it came to his closest friends.A deeper look into Tony after the news breaks of an explosion at the farmhouse in "Family First"
Relationships: Ziva David/Anthony DiNozzo
Comments: 1
Kudos: 26





	The World Shifted

McGee knew it was going to be bad when he heard Tony yelling and slamming on his desk from inside the elevator. He heard Gibbs threaten to fire him. He knew that Gibbs didn’t mean it but extremes were the only thing that would work right now. Tony was too deaf to hear anything but them. 

Tim had asked to be the one to tell Tony. Tony was his best friend and he had seen the way he stared at that desk across the bullpen for years. Knowing Ziva was gone, knowing that his friend who always had his back wasn’t alive was hard to think about but what Tony was feeling? He knew that it was worse. Tim remembered how he felt when Delilah was paralyzed. He thought the rug had been pulled out from underneath him but he still had Delilah at the end of the day. He wondered what Tony still had.

“McGee, get him out of here and keep him at home this time!” Gibbs bellowed before McGee had even entered his eyeline. It would seem grief wasn’t dulling any of the Boss’s senses. If anything, it was heightening them. There was no way the three of them were coming out of this unscathed. She meant too much to all of them.

Tony allowed himself to be manhandled away from his desk, maybe one of the only times he listened to McGee. He mutely followed Tim into the elevator and then back to his car. He had run out of his apartment when McGee and Abby broke the news. This was his first moment to sit in that grief since he had heard. 

“I know you loved her, Tony.” McGee said in that irrationally calm voice of his. The Probie was a lot of things but he was fiercely level headed when needed; the perfect counterpart to Tony, who broke the rule about not getting emotionally involved more times than he could count. Even more than Gibbs.

Tony had never said the words out loud. He had wanted to, God did he want to. It felt like every day he woke up with those words burning the back of his throat like yesterday’s thai food. He had only ever said those words a few times before and each time was its own mistake. How many times could you give parts of your soul away before you broke, Tony wondered. Now the only person he knew that he should tell was gone.

“Cmon, talk to me. Be real with me for once.” McGee tried bravely again. Tony knew he was just trying to rile him up, but it was working. He couldn’t stop.

“Be real with you, Tim? You want me to be real with you? You want me to tell you that it feels like the earth is shaking and I can’t get my footing for the life of me! You want to hear that? Huh? You want to hear me tell you that every minute since I left her in Israel I have felt myself becoming a shell of who I once was. Yes, Tim, I loved her! Saying that I love her doesn’t even feel like enough! It feels like a shadow compared to what I am living through knowing, knowing, that…” He faltered. In classic DiNozzo fashion, he was quickly deflating after an emotional outburst. On a different day, he would blame it on his Italian roots, or Senior being his benchmark for how to process emotions, but not today. There was no place for jokes today.

Ziva David was dead. She was gone and Tony felt like he had failed the one job he was meant to do. It was his job to save her. He always saved her. Somalia, Ray, her father, whatever it was, it was his responsibility to keep her safe, even when she stood in her own way.

“I’ve fallen in love before. I loved Wendy, I loved Jeanne, but Ziva?” Tim noticed how Tony choked on her name. This went much deeper than he had ever suspected. McGee knew they were close and that Tony was a wreck those first few months after he came home without her, but this was hinting at something way bigger.

“I could barely handle her sending me away. The only thing keeping me together was that it was what she wanted and I would have done anything she wanted.” Tony whispered. McGee was finding himself more and more out of his depth by the second. He knew that Tony wasn’t the shallow pool he made himself out to be but he could count on his one hand how many times he had seen Tony show his true colors. He would only need one finger for this moment right here.

McGee started to think back on all the moments he had filed away in his mental “Weird stuff about Tony and Ziva” folder. It was one of the bigger mental folders he had. They had given him a lot to think about over the years. The flirting, obviously, but that was to be expected with Tony, he did that to almost everyone in the office. Their constant need to be up in each other’s space, well, he had written off that one too but looking back, he wasn’t sure why. Neither of them did that to anyone else.

It was no secret that they were close. Tony always knew what to order Ziva for takeout without even asking. She was the only one he could talk about Senior with without flying off the handle. Abby once joked when Ziva wasn’t answering her cell to try Tony’s. He thought about a dinner party Ziva threw eons ago. Before Michael Rivkin, even before Director Shephard’s death. Jimmy drunkenly dropped a glass of wine on Ziva’s loveseat. Tony knew where the broom and the cleaning products were without having to ask. 

McGee thought about the Jewish star he had seen in Tony’s desk. He had seen Tony hold it once during an all nighter of a rough case. He remembered thinking that he didn’t know Tony’s hand could be so delicate.

Suddenly it all made so much more sense. Tony and Ziva had been in love. For years. Right under his nose. He often thought it was a product of recent developments for Tony but it was clear to see that this was almost a decade worth of adoration slowly built for one another. He looked up at Tony, meeting his eyes.

Tony’s tears were still threatening to spill out. He looked back at McGee so earnestly and openly that McGee knew he could read his mind.

“The day I met her my whole world shifted. At first, I thought it was the pain of losing Kate but the grief subsided eventually. My world didn’t return to normal. And now?” His voice wavered again. McGee could feel his own eyes welling up with tears. “What am I supposed to do now that my center of gravity is just gone?”

McGee stepped forward and wrapped his arms around his best friend. There was nothing more he could do. He held on tight as his friend cried into his shoulder. The world did feel like it was missing something now. 

Ziva David was gone and it felt like she took Tony DiNozzo with her.

**Author's Note:**

> Found myself rewatching NCIS and wishing that they had done some things differently. Trying to fix that here.


End file.
